


Bloom for Whom You May

by cultivationArtisan (Chai)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, F/M, General Weirdness on Handmaid's Part, Handmaid loses, Mild Gore, NUFF SAID, Obsession, There's a lot of weird bullshit okay, Weird Fluff, Weird Green Sun Bullshit, Weird Void Bullshit, implied suicidal thoughts, they have a fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 19:58:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1440898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chai/pseuds/cultivationArtisan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Demoness covets an Executioner: There's nothing quite so good at snuffing out a flame than the airless void.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloom for Whom You May

**Author's Note:**

> Yet well I ken the banks where Amaranths blow,  
> Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.  
> Bloom, O ye Amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,  
> For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
> 
> \- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Work Without Hope"

Diagnosing their relationship was not a task for the faint of heart. It was a pair that even the most talented of match makers could not have fathomed for either troll involved, and truly, who would ever have given it any thought?

For to catch the eye of the Demoness meant to catch the eye of your death.

Trolls have coveted her for many reasons, desired her favor, wanted to control her power, but never had the idea of truly sharing time and affections with her been considered. It made their unique arrangement all the more unusual.

~

The first time she sees him is from afar. She has only vague knowledge of him, because his life has little relevance to hers. Her hand is not necessary to influence his path forward, and so she has no reason to know. But she notices him nonetheless, not because he is notable, but because he is not, even despite his impressive size. Her eyes glide right over him at first, and she must stare deliberately before his image comes solidly to her. It barely registers through the haze of her anger, and she remains only long enough to cleave the cliff-face, raining death onto those pursuing the Signless's struggling entourage.

She doesn't think about it.

~

The first time he sees her is closer than he is really comfortable with. He has been seeing flashes of green in the corners of his eyes for as long as he can remember, but one day he spots her lingering in the shadows. She is too busy watching his travelling companion dive from the boat to see that he has finally taken notice of her, and he is more perplexed than frightened. The particular curl of her horns brings to mind the lowblood herds, but they are larger than he has ever seen, body wrapped in green from head to dainty foot. She is a scant few yards away, and he could almost reach out a hand and touch her.

He blinks and she is gone, and the matter is driven temporarily from his thoughts by a waterlogged Mindfang hauling a sodden child over the rails and onto the deck.

He doesn't know what to think about it.

~

The first time she feels him is by accident. She slips through moments and glides idly through the small spaces between many bodies. It is a war zone and she has much to do in these moments, and she savors the taste of her very favorite job. The usual haze of hot blood and cooling bodies is one of the few things she finds enjoyable in her wretched existence, and when it is so suddenly interrupted she can't help but drop everything. It's a knife of ice cold clarity, cutting through the white hot smoke of her soul, and she has never felt anything like it.

It reminds her of when she was small, just a little.

She goes a quick, fluid circle, searching out that feeling again, and she finds it with the turn of a horn. The cold shoots along it's curl and straight down her spine, drawing an involuntary sound from her throat.

Oh. That's never happened before.

It's a little frightening, and that, too, is new.

Undeterred, she feels out the border of this strange Thing, rising above the bodies of the fighting and soon-to-be-dead to see if it extends over troll height. It does. She is able to find a sizable dome of this feeling, dancing unsteady fingers across It and dipping her toes past It's threshold, luxuriating in the sounds It forces her to make. She thinks she might enjoy It, and it's a sort of excruciating she has never experienced.

Then she sees him.

At the very peak of the invisible dome, she looks straight down, and again she can see that massive man. His horns point straight up in her direction and she can see the unusual glowing lines on his helm, shimmering gossamer trails from his lenses towards and around his horns. It is strange, but she remembers him.

He inspires a feeling in her, and she makes sure to remember it.

The Handmaid smiles as she comes to the warriors dying on the fields of the Taurid Rebellion.

~

The first time they touch, it is violent, and so beautifully intimate.

He stumbles upon a temple built in her honor millenia ago, long since abandoned and left to rot, decrepit and overgrown. (Her Imperious Condescension had found it heretical, and set the Grand Highblood and his horde upon it long ago.) She is ready for him this time, and she leaves small tokens to guide him deeper and deeper into it's labyrinth. Flowers. Hammered bits of metal. Precious jewels. He takes no notice of them but to find his way towards the nest of his 'admirer.'

She has been stalking him, really, and she has heard the Alternians speak quite badly of it.

He stands as mighty and proud in the innermost sanctum of her temple as he does on a battle field, horns nearly gouging the ceiling and shoulders scraping the frame of the entryway as he passes through it. He is truly enormous, and she marvels at him.

She does not bother to slip through moments, coming to rest against his back as time ticks merrily on in the back of her mind. He is ice cold under her cheek and the most solid thing her hands have ever touched, and she delights in it. Too much so.

He does not take kindly to the foreign touch and his reaction is swift. She is pushed away when he spins to face her, and his heavy fist nearly takes off her head.

They do battle, and neither will give the other a moments reprieve. There is a moment when physics betray her and she cannot duck quickly enough. Time screams for her to move between its beats, but she does not, and his blow lands squarely on her chest. Her rib cage crumples like paper and the momentum sends her flying, smashing into the wall opposite. She can hear her spine snap before she can feel it, and she thinks, what a beautiful man he is.

He straightens up, arms folding primly behind his back in the manner of a scholar as he regards her slumped form, and she wonders if he can see her blood from there. It's flowing magnificently from under her skin, dripping over her lips, streaming out from under the lashes of a ruptured eye. He speaks to her and his voice is rolling thunder, admitting that she held her ground well enough, and apologizes for her having to suffer such a painful death. He asks her to explain herself with her last breath, if she would be so kind.

She laughs. She tries to laugh and blood bubbles up in her lungs, so instead she coughs and gurgles, but she is delighted nonetheless. His frown deepens, and her insides finally erupt in green fire, bones snapping and crackling in the flames as they are welded back into place. She wishes she could see his eyes go wide under the helmet as she stands, wobbling weakly for a moment, but a stretch and pop of her back sorts her out quickly.

His ears lay down flat against his hair, and her claps of girlish delight perplex him into standing down entirely. It is to his credit as a soldier that he does not jump or gasp when she slips through the folds of time, appearing before him in a blink and laying flush against his body. She cups his hard cheeks and kisses him on the mouth, and the smallest part of her is sad that she is surely scalding his lips with hers.

She can think so clearly when she's beside him, and thinks this is certainly love. She abandoned hope long ago, but she hopes he can see the affection in her technicolor eyes, feel the love in her gentle smile. She thinks he does, and though she cannot be sure, he rests cold fingers on her back and continues to frown, like she's a puzzle he wants to unravel, and she thinks that's just fine.

He is left with nothing but warmth on his chest and in his fingers, the ghost of sweet fire on his lips, and a trail of magpie treasure leading him from the maze.

Darkleer is intrigued despite himself.

~

The first time they speak leaves them both shaken.

She makes a game of staying linear with him, and the challenge is both entertaining and disheartening. She wants always to rush to his side when she spots his immense shadow in the corners of her vision, but he has become something precious to her, and she does not want to upset him.

This concern for him is new, neither rage nor apathy, and she treasures the gift he has given.

She treasures his other gifts, too. Whether he realizes who she is, and wishes to appease her wrath with tribute, or a simple desire to leave tokens of acknowledgement or affection, he begins to create for her. Tiny, delicate flowers hammered from the bits of metal she had left him, and left in places he knows only she will find. It is a wonderful game for her, and she guards her small box of immortal flowers as jealously as a dragon with her horde. Her white tormentor does not begrudge her this oddity, for which she is relieved.

So many gifts.

Her garden outgrows the box before she grows bored of them, and she takes them to the place where they touched, filling cracks in the stone and patches of dirt with copper poppies and shimmering golden roses. Her favorite is a lily, made from steel polished to a mirror edge, and the petals are sharp enough to cut her fingers on.  
In thanks, she stops hiding from him, though rarely is she emboldened enough to touch him again. Instead she keeps him company late into the morning, making herself small atop a shelf as he works. She pretends to be the finest of his automatons, porcelain and alabaster powered by flame, and it is several of these visits before she realizes he thinks it too. He makes her in miniature, bright steel with copper horns and finely burnished wire for her hair.

She might be his muse, he says to her one day, peering across the room at where she lurks. He allowed her to remove his helmet once before, and now takes to removing it himself when she appears. She is fond of his eyes, so brightly blue and so very weary. She remembers a moment later that he has spoken to her directly, and cocks her head.

It makes him smile.

A muse for certain, his silent inspiration who comes and goes when it suits her, no sooner, no later. It is easier to work when she is there, he tells her, and though he had not been sure what to think of her at first, he has come to be fond of his quiet, spiral-horned shadow.

She could speak with him, she says, if he wants her to.

He looks alarmed, and it makes her laugh, bright and silvery and sharp. Like the lily he gave her.

They are silent together for several minutes and he coughs, forehead glistening as he admits that he doesn't know what he would want her to say. She smiles and it seems to put him at ease, until he begins looking her over with the critical gaze he saves for his creations. At length, he speaks again.

He would like to know her name, if nothing else.

She tells him she does not have one anymore.

He is confused, and she has enough sense to elaborate.

She is called many things, and though her title is Handmaid, that is not her name. Nor is Demoness, though the Alternians are fond of that one. She had a name when she was small, but she has forgotten it.

Darkleer looks affronted, as though she is deliberately being obtuse, and turns towards the metal he works idly in his hands. He folds it as easily as paper, muttering about how improper it is to lack a name at her age, no, it simply won't do. When he holds it out to her, the metal is a folded crane in the palm of his hand, and she makes certain to touch his skin before she takes the gift.

When he reaches up, she ducks her head closer, letting him press his palm to her cheek as she admires the little metal bird.

Doesn't she want a name? She thinks he sounds sad when he asks, but it's not a sad she's familiar with. It makes something in her chest tighten, and she wants to move away, so instead she comes closer and curls herself up under his arm.

She supposes she might like a name, she tells him, but it is not as though anyone would know it. Her master is content to call her by title, and so she has never needed a name, and she is rarely allowed things she does not need.

His hand is a wide spot of cold on her back, and it makes her shudder and sigh against his chest.

He asks, does she need _him_?

She does not know how to answer that, and she tells him so. She tells him also that she wants him regardless, because she feels like she should and because it is true. He is something she wants, badly, and she has never desired anything but death before.

The desire to flee increases. She can feel her heart stuttering against her ribs, and wonders why.

They stay together like that for some time, the crane cradled in her hands, and her body cradled in his arms. He rubs a lock of her hair between his fingers, knuckles brushing against her cheek, and somehow that calms her.

Amaranth, he says.

Amaranth?, she asks.

He tells her that it is her name now, if she wants it.

She asks him why, barely hearing herself over the suddenly resumed pounding in her chest. It feels like her heart is a bellows, stirring the flames inside of her into a fury.

He says it is because he will feel ridiculous if he has to refer to her as 'Handmaid.' She lives and thinks and speaks, and so she needs a name of her own. Even children have names.

(He says 'ridiculous' with a funny lilt in his voice and she smiles despite the howling in her ears.)

She sits up in his lap to hold his face and kiss him again, and his hands stay on her body, so she thinks he's beginning to like it when she does this. She thinks his heart might be beating faster as well, under her hands, and that finally breaks her.

She tells him against his mouth that she wants it, and Amaranth disappears between beats of his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a fun little free-writing experiment that got out of hand, but I'm really happy with the results. I wanted to play around with there being a relationship between these two that, like many others, was an inversion of the situation their descendants encountered. Thus, Handmaids rather creepy fixation with Darkleer, followed by his admittedly bemused reciprocation of her feelings. They're an odd pair, these two, but they kind of work...
> 
> The funniest part about all of this was that the name I gave her, Amaranth, was meant to be a jab at Darkleer for not being a very creative man. They're red flowers, after all! But after doing some research much later on, I found out that the amaranth is a flower known for symbolizing eternity or immortality... It's described as 'wiltless' and in flower language it means, "eternal love." Whoops! Darkleer is a wittier man then I realized...
> 
> I also have vague plans to write a part 2, in which Amaranth is hellbent on getting intimate with him, Darkleer panics and frets, and Mindfang laughs her ass off on several occasions, but I'm not sure how soon it will happen. Let me know if you would like to see more of these two!


End file.
